The Imperium Besieged

First of all – I’ll say this up front, it’s possible that The Imperium Besieged will not happen at all and if it does, at this point it does not seem likely that it will happen on the original date (November 26 and 27th). No matter what happens though, there is no concern over registrations. If the event does not happen there will be full refunds sent immediately. If we have to move it, there will either be refunds or the registration can be shifted to the new date (whatever the registrant prefers).

In the 16, now almost 17 years we’ve been running Astro events we’ve only ever had to do this twice before (once in Dallas and once in Vancouver) due to extremely low registration numbers. In the case of TIB, it’s actually completely surprising to us – and pretty heartbreaking. This event literally half filled the day we threw it open for registration. That level of support, five months before an event on the day it was announced was literally historical for us – it had never happened before. We were entirely confident that the event would go forward. In fact even if no one else had registered, it was already at break-even and we’d have run it. However what wound up happening was that a lot of folks dropped out for various real life reasons and only a tiny handful of people replaced them.

This has left us with an event that, if we were to run it, would literally cost us almost a thousand bucks out of pocket. As much as we want to do this – we just cannot afford that.

We only made the decision on Friday after analyzing the finances carefully to see if we could still make it work. If we get a flood of registrations (say 8-10 people) we might be able to make it work on the original date at a break-even. Not ideal, but we’d do it.

At any rate if that does not happen, and it does not seem likely – we’re hoping to reschedule once we get some feedback from the community on a good date. Hopefully in Jan or Feb. If you have any feedback on this, please send us a note at xian@astronomi-con.com and/or mmajor@astronomi-con.com .